Tom Conlon’s criticisms come in the week when the Education Minister launched a Pounds 4 million Internet initiative which will see more than 500 primary, secondary and special schools in the West of Scotland given access to the superhighway.
Brian Wilson was at Braidfield High in Clydebank, the first of a core group of seven schools, one in each council area covered by CableTel, which is awarding Pounds 20,000 over the next two years to provide training, hardware andor software that can be used by other schools.
Braidfield is to spend the money to develop the curricular use of the Internet. The school also has plans to have video conferencing with European schools as part of its modern language courses.
Mr Wilson confirmed that the Government’s enthusiasm for linking schools up to the Internet is undiminished, as he expressed the hope that the CableTel “Partnering Education” initiative will prove to be “a significant step on to the superhighway of the future”.
The Government plans to develop a “national grid for learning” which, initially via the Internet, will provide up-to-date training material for teachers as well as resources for pupils. There will be consultation on how this should be done following a White Paper to be issued shortly by the Department for Education and Employment on the structure of the national grid.
